[Urban Cragou]

The assumption that affinity and connection to your “ethnic” side as a person who’s mixed-race, to varying proportions (not just 50-50), is fractional and that an “octoroon” or “quadroon” is likely only gonna be 1/8 or 1/4 black “culturally”, respectively.

As-with a lot of things, it’s nuanced, it’s personal and depends on so much more than “dominant-vs.-recessive biological dominance”, fraction of mixicity, how “white” you can pass for and all-that other obvious stuff. Cultural heterogeneity is not inherently fractionated. It’s not transmitted in exact Mendelian ratios. So much of it depends on the individuality of the person themselves. An “octoroon” can be more directly in touch with their specific black side to them than a fully black person who has that ethno-cultural ancestry fully on both sides. Just-because one looks purely white (more-or-less anyway) at first glance doesn’t mean they inherently value fish fingers over jollof rice or jerk-goat. But that’s the implicit assumption a lot of purely white people make, where anyone who they don’t suspect to be at-least very obviously and significantly mixed, if not significantly of-colour, dipping into specific ancestral specifics comes across as alien and incongruous.

You can be 1/8 ethnically X but be raised and immersed fully and relationally within the eighth, 3/4 and disconnected from that 75%, half-and-half and not bothered one way or the other or whatever. The constellations and combinations are endless.